Confrontation!
by deeplyshallow
Summary: The himym characters confront the Carter and Craig about their finale. Parody


**Disclaimer: this is a parody and is not intended to be taken seriously in any way. I in no way believe this is how CTCB would react if the himym characters confronted them about the complete stupidity of the finale.**

**It will become obvious very quickly that this story doesn't take itself very seriously. I just have an odd sense of humour and enjoy expressing my dissatisfaction through parody.  
**

xxx

Ted raced up the stairs, blue French horn in hand, finally, finally he was going to get his happy ending, he was finally going to get Robin – the girl he'd wanted 25 years ago the instant he'd seen her across a bar.

But as he got closer to her door he could tell something wasn't right. Thoughts that hadn't invaded his brain for years suddenly came flooding in, but it didn't feel restricting, it felt freeing – as if, for the last 17 years, someone who didn't understand him at all had controlled him and finally he was breaking those bonds.

By the time he rang the doorbell he was just feeling confused.

Robin answered the door with a large but completely emotionless smile and dead eyes, but as soon as she saw Ted's puzzled expression the smile dropped off her face, "Ted, what are we doing?"

Ted hesitated, suddenly all the rhetoric he was so sure of had fallen straight out of his head, he didn't love Robin the way he loved Tracy, he never had. He hadn't had feelings for her for years. Anyway Robin, as a human being with her own feelings, had already told him she didn't love him so he really shouldn't have even been thinking of putting emotional pressure on her like this in the first place.

"I... I don't know," he said quietly, "I'm not really sure what I'm doing."

Robin invited him inside – noticing for the first time how funny it was that she had the exact same apartment and dogs that she had had 25 years ago, "I'm not sure either, I feel... different now."

"Me too," said Ted, "I feel like ever since I met Tracy..." he paused as something hit him, "Oh God, Tracy's dead! How did I not let this sink in for the last six years? I can't even remember her funeral!"

"Don't worry," said Robin, "it only lasted like one second." But suddenly she fell quiet too, hit with another thought, she looked down and tried to blink away the tears that welled up in her eyes.

"Barney?"

She nodded, "What the hell was I thinking when I offered him an out? It was like the words came out of my mouth without my permission. I'd have discussed other job options if my job was making him that unhappy. I'm not sure what made me want to take that job so badly anyway, I haven't wanted to travel like that since 2006. Come to think of it, I'm not sure why he was so against it either, he speaks six languages, he's never minded travelling, it seems a bit out of character..."

She was distracted from her train of thought by the phone ringing, she picked it up automatically, "Hello?"

"Aunt Robin, is Dad there?" came the immediate response, when she said he was Penny immediately said, "Can you tell him we gave him the world's most stupid advice? He doesn't love you and you two don't work together, that's literally what he was telling us for his entire story. I'm not sure how we managed to get the wrong end of the stick there – sorry about that. Plus, no offence, but you're not going to be anything on our dead mother that we actually miss."

"Yeah, don't worry about it kids," she said, "I haven't liked your dad for the past 23 years, I'm not sure why I was even thinking about being with him." She put down the phone, "You're right Ted, something weird is going on."

Ted nodded, still a little pale, "As a bit of a detective, I say we start by tracing when this all started."

Robin rolled her eyes at the detective comment, but had to agree it was pretty sound logic (for once), "Just after my wedding, I think, first it was just simple, stupid stuff, like forgetting that I performed a Robin Sparkles number at the wedding, not performing our wedding dance despite the fact we'd practiced it for weeks... but then one day I woke up and felt like I did in 2006 for no apparent reason and then, before I knew it, I suddenly lost all my emotions until I had these completely bizarre and, frankly, somewhat disgusting, feelings for you."

"It started around the same time for me," confessed Ted, "Just after I met Tracy, I was happy for a while, but then I started forgetting she even existed and started pining after you. I had brief periods of lucidity – just before Luke was born, that time when Tracy got really hung-over after the launch party for her book and, just recently, when I was telling the story of how I met her to the kids – until the end, when – I don't know – my mind just compelled me to visit you even though I'd just finished telling my kids how we never worked together."

Suddenly, Robin's door burst open, Barney was there, red faced, sweaty and panting, his eyes were glistening with tears, "Robin," he said, "Robin, I'm so sorry, I don't know what came over me... I didn't want to..."

But Robin cut him off, "Oh thank God," she said, running into his arms.

Fifteen minutes later and Ted thought it was probably time to stop the graphic make out session that had started after the hugging and sobbing had ended, "Uh guys, we have things to talk about." No response, "Guys, come on, something weird is going on here... Seriously, there are things more important than taking each other's clothes off while I am still standing here..."

Barney finally broke apart from Robin to look at Ted, "Ted, my wife and I have not been together for fourteen years, there is nothing more important than making up for lost time."

"Yeah, but Marshall and Lily..."

"You get them, we're busy."

"Ok..." said Ted, slowly edging out of the room.

When Ted arrived at Marshall and Lily's house, Lily answered the door wearing a dress which looked like it belonged to a 1950s housewife.

"Oh Ted!" she simpered, "Come in! I'm just having a bit of a spring clean before I put on dinner for Marshall!"

And, for the first time in 17 years, Ted wondered what had got into his friend, who had once wanted more than to just become a wife and a mother.

"Lily," he said cautiously, "do you still do your art work?"

"My art?" giggled Lily, "No, no I gave that up after Rome, I just decided I didn't have time because..." she paused, and the happy, somewhat hypnotised, expression fell off her face, "because... I don't know why... I gave up my career and just started raising my children... how did I never question this?"

Suddenly, Marshall stepped out of the background, where he had been standing, almost invisible and looking like furniture, for the past decade and a half, horrified with himself, "and why did I never ask you about it? I just let you keep having kids and give up any of your dreams just so I could further my career."

"Something strange is going on," Ted said, taking out his travel sized yellow legal pad that he carried everywhere in his fanny pack, and writing down a few notes, "we seem to have been acting oddly for years and have just snapped out of it. Anything else out of character you've done?

"I don't know," said Marshall, "we haven't really done much since Barney and Robin's wedding." He pointed to his head, "I got bald!"

Lily gasped, "Barney and Robin! Are both of them ok? I swear we did next to nothing to help or comfort them when they broke up..."

Ted smiled sadly, "I know, I feel awful, especially after all Barney did for us, time and time again. But they snapped out of whatever's going on too. They're currently making up for lost time. Graphically."

Lily let out a "Wooo!" that was definitely not meant for indoors.

"I thought we should all meet up and discuss it properly. Probably at Robin's because I don't think she and Barney will be leaving any time soon."

"Good idea," said Marshall, quickly, hoping desperately that no one would remember that for brief, odd periods of time he'd randomly and nonsensically supported 'Team Tedward'.

Lily turned to her children, who, as always, had just appeared when they were useful to the plot, "Dad and I are going to Aunt Robin's, so you're in charge of the house. Marvin, Daisy, look after third child..." Lily paused, "sorry, I can't seem to remember your name or gender."

Third child shrugged, because really (s)he was just a blob with no personality.

xxx

When they got back to Robin's place a sign for Wang's Chinese food was on the door.

"Yeeeeah," said Ted, "we might be waiting a while."

Eight hours later, Barney and Robin emerged from the room.

"You finished?" asked Ted.

"Nah, quick hydration break," said Barney, "we're not stopping for long."

Ted rolled his eyes, "Ok, but first can we properly talk about what has been going on? We seem to have spent the past seventeen years being controlled by some unseen force."

"Aliens!" said Marshall immediately.

"Pffft," said Robin, "why would aliens want to ruin our lives?"

"I don't know, maybe they get off on it."

"Yes, I'm sure fictitious creatures get off on human pain."

"Fictitious? Robin, have you never heard of Area 51?"

"Let's try and look a little closer to home for now," said Lily, grasping Marshall's arm gently before this could turn into an all out fight (or worse, a dance off – they really were too old for that now).

"GNB might have some information," said Barney, "I mean it has computers set to hack into most major co-operations, including the secret services."

"But you haven't worked at the GNB for years," said Lily.

Barney shrugged, "The passwords probably haven't changed since early 2006, nothing else seems to have."

Suddenly Lily thought of something, "Barney! Your child! Where is she?"

"Oh Ellie?" said Barney, "Turns out she was just a burlap sack with a marker pen face drawn on, and a really loud CD player that made baby noises inside, designed to punish me whenever I tried to enjoy myself. I don't know why it took me ten years to work that out..."

"So, we break into GNB?" suggested Ted.

"Night Falcon is on it," said Robin, "I just need to get into my suit. Barney, do you want to... help me do up my zipper?"

Ted groaned.

After far more time than was strictly necessary for changing they set off.

It didn't take much effort to get into GNB (certainly not enough to warrant Robin to change into her catsuit or bring along her guns but, by the way Barney was looking at her, Ted suspected she had ulterior motives), Barney was right, the passwords hadn't changed and the gang no longer appeared to be the centre of attention the way they always used to be, so no one noticed them as they walked along the corridors.

Weirdly, Barney's office had not changed in the 17 years since he left either (except for the installation of a holographic phone). Barney booted up the computer and soon he was sorting through classified files.

"Oh here's something useful!" Barney said, after clicking on a file labelled 'deus ex machina', he paused to read the document, "...no, no way!"

"What?" said Ted, moving to read over Barney's shoulder, "Ok, so... We are apparently all characters in a TV show, written in a parallel universe..."

"I knew it!" said Marshall, punching his fists in the air, "Is Carl a vampire too?"

"Nothing about vampires here," said Ted, continuing to scroll through the amazingly informative document. "We were in an awesome, well written show with brilliant, intelligent, good looking, sexy fans and deep three dimensional characters – um, that's us I guess – until the last episode where the head writers, Carter Bays and Craig Thomas, decided to screw all our character development up for some reason."

The gang were silent for a few moments.

"Wait," said Lily finally, "so the reason our lives have sucked for the last 17 years is because of these writers? Is there any way we can talk to them and tell them what we think?"

"Waaaay ahead of you," said Barney scrolling down to the bottom of the article, "it says here that GNB have been developing parallel universe travelling ray guns, enter a universe and location, fire it and it creates a portal that you can then jump through into that universe."

The portal gun happened to be being stored in a cupboard in Barney's office, "That was very convenient," said Ted, "if I didn't know better I'd say we were still being terribly written..."

The others ignored Ted and his silly and completely inaccurate comment and instead studied the futuristic gun.

Robin typed the appropriate co-ordinates screen and immediately the gun buzzed into action. She shot the gun once and the air around it began to shimmer and form into a tunnel. "Ok, let's jump in." She said, but Marshall held her back.

"Guys, guys," said Marshall, "we can't just 'jump in', this is our first inter-dimensional leap, this is an important moment for us all, we need to savour the memory."

"Moment savoured," said Barney after a second, "now let's go in and confront these idiots." And jumped in, the rest of the gang following close behind him.

They landed in a small room with two computers and writing desks, the bins were filled up with old himym scripts, Carter having deemed them useless since pretty much every single one of them contradicted his ridiculous ending.

In the room sat two men. One was a giant ugly man-child, busy fantasising about how he could get back together with his teenaged sweetheart the other one was listening to him intently, agreeing with whatever he said, no matter how stupid. The men looked up as they registered the gang in the room.

"TED!" screeched Carter childishly, drawing Ted into a great big smelly hug. Ted pushed him off him as fast as he could. Carter then looked over and saw Barney, "Oh, it's you," he said scowling stupidly, before taking in the rest of the gang.

"Gosh Robin, you look so beautiful," said Carter sweating like the overgrown adolescent boy that he was.

Craig stood behind him not meeting anyone's eyes, "Yes, Carter's right ,as usual," he muttered, pathetically.

"Firstly," said Robin, "have you seen the state of my hair? I have never looked less hot."

"Yeah, but you're wearing a catsuit..." said Barney.

"Secondly," interrupted Robin, sparing a quick grin in her husband's direction, "I have just suffered the worst 13 years of my life and I would like an explanation."

"I wrote a beautiful, flawless, ending," stated Carter delusionally.

The gang immediately burst into a babble of protests, "How was that beautiful?"

"Killing the woman I spent the whole show looking for and making my kids emotionless sociopaths, is just horrendous."

"I've never seen a life as lame as the one you gave me in the finale and I'm not even like that anymore."

"I'm not beautiful when I'm bald!"

"We were well written, consistent and three dimensional for 9 seasons," Robin summed up, "and then suddenly it's an out of character mess. Tell us what's going on."

"No," said Carter, fatly.

"Pretty please?" said Marshall.

Robin looked at Marshall scathingly, "Oh come on," she said, "that's not going to wo..."

"Ok, fine I'll tell you everything," said Craig, instantly.

Marshall high fived Lily in satisfaction.

"Well," Craig tremored, "um... I don't know if you know, but Ted and Marshall are based on Carter and I and the show was based on our adult lives. Carter, the super genius that he is, thought he would write a story about a guy who didn't get the girl. But then when we were part way through season one he realised how beautiful Robin was and that he loved Ted and Robin together so much that he wrote an amazing, inspired ending where Ted and Robin find their way back to each other."

"Ok," said Ted slowly, "I guess in the first year we knew each other I didn't really know Robin well enough to know whether she and I would work – I mean I had some very strong hints we wouldn't – but still. But by the time we'd stopped dating, and definitely by the time Robin and Barney were clearly in love, and I was only clinging onto the thought of her because Tracy hadn't yet made me realise what true love really was, that ending didn't make any sense at all."

"Well his ending was such a masterpiece of modern literature that he didn't want to change a single thing about it, even 8 years later," simpered Craig.

"No it wasn't." Snapped Robin.

"And if you really wanted this ending," said Lily, "why did you write Barney and Robin at all? Why didn't you write Ted and Robin as in love the whole series?"

"Because I wanted it to be a surprise!" said Carter pouting pathetically, "Also, so none of the fans or the other writers (all who simply were not deep and mature enough to understand my brilliant ending) would have let me get away with my ending if they'd known so I had to keep it a secret."

"Oh God," said Ted, hit by the fact he was based on this imbecile, "tell me I don't act like this."

"Only occasionally Ted," said Robin.

"You're really good at keeping secrets Carter," said Craig, relevantly.

"Shut up, you stamp tramp," muttered Marshall.

"So basically you mucked up what could have been a wonderful ending so you could get off on your self-insert fantasy of you getting Robin?" said Lily.

"Hey!" shouted Carter annoyingly, "Robin should be pleased to end up with Ted, he's a good guy – just like me! Women should all want to be like him! Like they should want to be with me! All those women who abandoned me to go off with Barney-like guys are going to regret it!"

"So you ruined Robin's life for your petty issues?" asked Lily.

"And mine!" said Ted, who unlike his horrid counterpart still remembered that he loved Tracy and not Robin.

"That's horrible," said Marshall.

"Those girls – boobs?" said Barney.

"See!" said Carter, pointing his grotesque fingers at Barney, unattractively, "That, right there, is why you shouldn't trust Barney. All he's thinking about is sex!"

"But I love him. I love him for who he is and I trust him enough that he'd never do anything that would hurt me," said Robin. "And why should I be with Ted instead?" she added, dangerously, "All he does is whine about his life and having kids."

"Hey, I'm standing right here!" said Ted.

"Ok, Ted can occasionally be a little dorky..." said Carter smellily, ("Still standing here," said Ted in the background,) "but only in the most adorably perfect way, he's a good guy, he deserves you."

"Well guess what," said Robin, "I don't want him, I have my own feelings, I can make my own decisions, I'm not just some prize to be won."

At this point both Carter's brain cells were so boggled by the revelation that women actually have their own opinions and feelings that he temporarily froze as he tried to process this startling new information.

Robin took this opportunity to turn to Craig, "And you let him get away with that?" she said icily, "You honestly thought all this was good?"

"Well I did have a few concerns," Craig whispered, trembling, "but when I brought them up he called me a meaniepoo, and I don't like being called a meaniepoo, it makes me cry. So I though, yeah, ok, he's probably right, after all he is a genius."

"No wonder I got pretty much written out," said Marshall.

"Speaking of Marshall and me," said Lily, remembering she too had spent the last 17 years horribly OOC, "How come I pretty much lost all my career aspirations that I'd spent years trying to find?"

"Well, you had kids." Said Carter, blankly.

"But I wanted a job. I had a job I liked."

"But you got babies!"

"But I wanted a job!"

"Babies! All women want babies!"

"Oh, so it was tasteful to make me infertile and give Barney a baby with a one night stand?" asked Robin, darkly.

"But you got Ted's kids!"

"I don't like Ted's kids!" shouted Robin, but upon seeing Ted's glare she amended, "Well, of course I like them (when they're not being bratty sociopaths), but not in that way, not enough to want to be a stepmom to them."

"And I wouldn't want Robin to act as mother to them," added Ted, "you know who I want to mother them? Tracy. Their mother. The one I spent your entire show telling my kids how we met. That you killed off with an unknown illness in a matter of seconds."

"It was deep and meaningful!" shrieked Carter in his ugly voice.

"No it wasn't!" the rest of the gang chanted back, wondering exactly how stupid this man had to be if he hadn't yet managed to get their message.

"And why did you have me joke that my dead wife was a stripper?" demanded Ted.

Craig puffed out his chest (in a fairly timid manner), "Hey, _I _named her Tracy. I stood up for myself and everything! When fans insisted we named her Carter was like 'why don't we call her Uterus – after all that's all she is' but I was like 'No! A few casual fans thought they were clever and worked out her name was Tracy so let's just go with that!' and we did! I wanted everyone to love me for it!"

Lily put on her best 'talking to a stupid kindergartner' voice, "How could you think they'd love you? You had an intelligent fanbase and the most stupid, out of character ending of all time."

Carter stamped his foot, his face turning an unpleasant shade of red, "NO! NO! NO!" he cried, "my ending was perfect, everything was beautiful."

"Um, my wife died," said Ted.

"That was realistic," said Carter uglily .

"Realistic?" Said Lily, "in a world with thought speech and cockamice and doppelgangers?"

"How is making Robin and me break up over wifi, realistic?" said Barney.

"There were probably other reasons," shouted Carter, spottily.

"Such as what?"

"Umm... Stuff? Maybe?"

"So you broke up a relationship 5 years in the making and you don't even know why?"

"Oh you were never going to work."

"Um, how did we get from being labelled as soulmates to breaking up?"

"It was foreshadowed!" Carter insisted, stupidly.

"When?"

"You kept lying to Robin."

"I did not keep lying to her! I lied to her maybe three times in the entire relationship and two of those times were for an awesome surprise," he paused to high-five his wife, "and anyway, I vowed to stop doing that at our wedding."

"Well um yeah..." said Carter, moronically, "but you had so many issues during your wedding."

"All of which we resolved solidly, normally in about ten minutes. We were fine by the time of the ceremony."

"LALALALALAAAAAAAAA!" said Carter, sticking his fingers in his ears, "I'M NOT LISTENING TO YOU!"

Robin reached into her handbag, "Well maybe this will help clean your ears," she said, taking out her gun.

Both Carter and Craig shrunk back in horror.

Robin smirked, "Not such a submissive male fantasy now, am I boys?" she said.

("You're definitely still my fantasy," muttered Barney from the sidelines.)

"What do you want?" shrieked Craig, pathetically, "We'll give you anything you want! Do you want my firstborn? Or all my children! I can give you them! Just please don't hurt me!"

Ted, ignored Craig's stupid pushover babbling, got out his yellow legal pad and turned to Carter, "I've written a list of everything that needs to be changed back to normal, so you'd better start writing."

Carter got out his computer disgustingly and opened the document, as Ted started to dictate, "Ok, firstly, my wife does not die, Barney and Robin do not divorce, I do not still have feelings for Robin, Lily keeps her job..."

"So it's that easy then?" said Robin to Craig, as Carter continued to type Ted's requests, "We'll be back to ourselves 17 years ago but with a much better ending?"

"Yeah," said Craig, eager to please, "we're your writers, pretty much whatever happens in your universe is up to us."

"Wait," said Robin, a grin sneaking up on her face, "so you're saying that you control everything in our universe? You could make anything happen?"

"Well, technically yes..." said Craig.

Barney walked up to where Ted and Carter were writing, "Ted, move over, the professionals are taking charge of this."

xxx

It was a beautiful afternoon in 2030 New York. There was no smog in the sky because all pollution was gone. In fact all damaged environments had been restored to their natural glory around the time Tracy had single handedly restored world peace and ended world poverty.

Lily had taken the afternoon off from her job as the owner of an international chain of art and fashion galleries to visit Tracy, who had just published her 683rd bestseller, and both women were sitting on the front porch chatting and idly watching the TV on their outdoor cinema set.

"Look, they're about to be on!" said Tracy.

"I'll call Marshall, make sure he's home in time." Said Lily, getting out her holographic phone.

"I know, I know, I'm coming baby!" said Marshall's hologram as soon as it popped up.

Seconds later Marshall (who still had a thick head of lush brown hair and had successfully grown a moustache) teleported onto the porch, after a hard day's work exploring alien planets. He was allowed to take as much time off as he liked, because his boss understood he needed time to socialise and get drunk with his friends.

Tracy passed him a bottomless beer glass and called the kids into the room. Penny, Luke, Marvin and Daisy entered (third child no longer existed and no one much seemed to care) bringing snacks for everyone – because the gang's wonderful parenting skills made them incredibly well behaved children who never feel the need to get drunk, take drugs or rebel in any way.

"And now," said the announcer, "here to host the opening ceremony of the fourth laser tag world cup, celebrated champions and joint Presidents of the World – just, once again, unanimously elected into power for their fifth term, Barney and Robin Stinson!"

"I still can't believe they managed to make themselves Presidents of the World," sighed Tracy.

"I still can't believe we allowed them to make it a law to wear suits at least four days a week." Said Marshall, looking, slightly mournfully, down at his own shirt and tie.

"I can't believe we let the 'but Robin can wear sundresses whenever she feels like it' addendum slide either." Added Lily.

But they were distracted from their conversation by the incredibly impressive opening ceremony, which involved a lot of bright flashing lights, magic and an alarming number of ninjas. It was awesome.

"And now," said the announcer, "for an interview with Sir Ted Mosby, architect of this stadium, in addition to 78 skyscrapers and New York's new opera house which was unanimously voted 'best edition ever to New York's skyline'."

Tracy perked up, looking at the screen with renewed interest, while the others (especially Ted's poor children) attempted to hide their boredom as Ted droned on about his eternal love for columns.

When Ted was finally finished the cameraman went back to Barney and Robin for their closing interview and Ted teleported to the front porch.

"How was I?"

"You were brilliant, baby!" said Tracy, rushing over to him immediately.

Lily and Marshall nodded, amused expressions on their faces, as they watched Ted and Tracy hold each other – just happy to be together, forever, with no unnamed but completely fatal illness in sight (or indeed ever going to happen as now the gang were all eternally youthful and healthy with the skin and libido of 21 year olds).

A few minutes later Barney and Robin teleported in too.

"So, how was it?" asked Robin.

"It was so awesome! Did you see when that ninja did that 20 foot leap and crushed five rocks with his skull and when the dinosaur..."

Robin hit her husband affectionately, "I know what you thought of it, I was asking the others."

"It was super awesome!" said Marshall, "I loved it when the chimpanzee wearing two tuxes started singing 'Let's go to the Mall'!"

Robin sighed, "Remind me never to lose a bet to Barney again."

"Oh come on it was legendary!" said Barney.

Robin paused to consider, "Ok, it was pretty funny," and high fived her husband.

Later in the evening, after the children obediently had their chocolate milk and went to bed, the gang sat together, talking, laughing, drinking, and playing card games, simply enjoying each other's company. Free from the trials and worries of growing up and mentally imbalanced writers, they simply enjoyed the fact that the six of them (like there always should have been), were together, happy, at last. Marshall and Lily happy with, but not overshadowed by their children. Barney and Robin, more interested in each other than the flow of conversation or the game of bridge, their relationship as strong as it had been the moment they said their vows. And Ted and Tracy, apparently still reluctant to let the other go out of their site for even a minute, not after they'd fought so hard to get here. Their life was perfect and they planned to keep it that way.

Marshall slammed his winning cards down on the table, "BRIDGE!"


End file.
